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I don’t have anything left worth fighting for.
He orders them to hold me still while he pulls my pants and underwear down.
I stand there unmoving while he pronounces me guilty of consorting with the devil and of courting sin.
I only flinch when I see the red-hot brand handed to him.
I search the crowd for my mother. She’s restrained. And she’s fighting like crazy, but not making any headway. Her eyes meet mine, and they are wide with fear and something else I can’t understand. I hold her gaze, and I don’t look away. I know what’s coming.
I have never witnessed one of these ceremonies. We haven’t had one since I was seven years old. But I remember the sounds of it.
I want to be brave.
I won’t show him how scared I am. I won’t make a sound.
I focus on my mother. If I keep my eyes on her, I’ll be okay.
When I smell the smoke and feel the heat, my heart races. My mother’s eyes lose some their panic. She mouths “I love you,” and gives me a small smile. I start to smile back.
Then the brand touches my skin. The searing pain destroys all of my control. I have no desire to be brave or quiet. I feel piss run down my legs, but I don’t care.
I scream a high-pitched, loud, desperate sound that draws gasps of shock and groans of horror from the crowd gathered around me.
The pain reaches its crazy, fevered pitch and the last thing I remember seeing before I passed out was my mother’s tortured face as she rushed toward me.
“Graham, wake up.” I hear my mother’s voice, and I push it away … Since the day of the branding, sleep has been my escape. My dreams are my only solace.
In the days that followed, the burn got infected. I was so sick that I was sure that I was dying. I prayed fervently for an escape from this endless hell. From the pain and loneliness.
I burned with a fever for a week, and the entire time my mother sat by my bedside. Every snatch of consciousness I got was full of the sound of her weeping and begging me to wake up.
In my delirium, I dreamed that I was standing at a fork in the road. On one side, Ellie stood smiling at me and telling me to join her. She told me how happy she was now. How pain free the place she lived was. I wanted to go be with her.
But, on the other side stood Apollo, telling me of all of the adventures we still had waiting for us. Promising me that if I woke up, she’d be there waiting. Waiting for me to come join her in that hammock and read. I don’t know anything about what it means to love someone except for what I feel for my Mama.
But even in the hazy place between wake and sleep where I hover, I know I love her. That piece of me she took, I can feel it. Like it’s calling me. Sometimes, I get this tingle in my chest, and I think maybe she’s thinking about me, too.
When I wake up from the fever I was sure would kill me, I know it’s because of her. I hate her for it. Because I woke up and she’s not here.
I wanted to scream in frustration as my mother wept and wailed as she held me to her. Her tears coated my face as she clung to me and thanked God for sparing me. She didn’t know that her God, as usual, had done nothing for anyone. Except give Jeremiah more sway over Cain’s Weeping.
He said my waking up was a sign that God had forgiven me, and since then, he’s made me stand before the congregation once a month and give testimony about how merciful he and the Lord have been.
I say whatever he asks of me. I answer his questions with the words I know he wants to hear. I pray aloud whenever he’s in earshot. I sit still when he takes his clippers to my head every two weeks and shaves my hair off.
I don’t even mind that anymore. I’m glad I don’t have any hair. It’s a constant reminder of her. When I think of her, my heart feels like it’s being wrung dry. Like every last drop of blood is draining from it.
She wasn’t just my friend. She had been my hope for something more than what my daily life promised.
Now, I have only one hope. Only one prayer. I want him to die.
I would kill him myself if I ever had the chance, but I know I never will.
They treat me like a wild animal they captured. I spend all day chained by my ankle to my bed. My window is boarded up, and my door is locked with a chain and deadbolt that only he has the key to. When I sleep, they handcuff my wrists, too.
I don’t mind. I want to be alone. The only time I’m not is when my mother comes in to bring me food once a day. And to bathe me once a week. She always cries when she looks at the scar the brand has left.
It says S for Sinner.
